1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dual-operating-system architectures, and in particular to techniques for the dual-operating-system architectures to share USB devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable electronic devices, such as notebook computers and smartphones, have become indispensable for modern-day humans.
Conventionally, the operating system (OS) which is most widely used in electronic devices is the Microsoft Windows OS. Nowadays, however, the Android OS, which is based on a Linux OS, is also popular. The two operating systems perform differently with different operations. In order to take advantage of both OSs, some designs integrate the two OSs into a single electronic device. In some designs, the electronic device has only one CPU to process instructions for dual OSs, while in some other designs, separate CPUs are respectively in charge of one of the OSs. Generally, in a dual OS architecture, only one of the OSs will be in operation while the other will remain in a sleep state at the same time. In this manner, the dual OSs can share resources and unnecessary conflicts can be prevented.
Ideally, in order to reduce configuration costs and enhance usage convenience, the two OSs should be able to share all peripheral devices and avoid any duplicate device.